Nearly 50 candidates running in April 13 vote in Terrebonne. The head of Elections Canada said voters will have to write in their pick in next month's byelection in an off-island Montreal suburb due to the long list of protest candidates running in the riding. Chief Electoral Officer Stéphane Perrault told a committee of MPs on Tuesday that the write-in...
Pipeline operator Enbridge Inc. hasn’t ruled out helping build a new oil pipeline from Alberta to the British Columbia coast under the right regulatory conditions, the company’s top executive said.
'I want to know how many terrorists are there in Canada,' Conservative says. Public Safety Minister Gary Anandasangaree faced pointed questions Tuesday about why the federal government has deported one Iranian official, despite longstanding concerns about how the regime operates in Canada and abroad. Finding himself in the hot seat before a parliamentary committee, Anandasangaree said Canada is "aggressively trying...
Air Canada’s chief executive officer was summoned on Tuesday to explain himself before the Committee on Official Languages regarding his English-only message of condolence to the families of the pilots, including one from Quebec, who died on Sunday evening in the plane collision at New York’s LaGuardia Airport. The statement provoked the committee’s “strong indignation” and is “incompatible with the...
As Canadian drivers continue to see a spike in the price at the pump, Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne won’t commit either way on dropping the gas tax to provide some relief. The war in the Middle East has now exceeded three weeks, with Iran continuing to block the vital Strait of Hormuz, sending oil prices soaring globally. According to CAA...
Worry about jobs/economy pulling away from the other concerns of Canadians. The Liberals are maintaining a double-digit lead over the Conservatives. Carney has a 32-point advantage on the preferred Prime Minister tracking over Poilievre.
Across North America, the rapid expansion of AI infrastructure has begun to collide with public concerns about energy use, environmental impact, and who ultimately benefits.
Every March, millions of fans set aside their better judgment and give themselves over to the chaos of a basketball tournament aptly called March Madness. Its charm is simple. Anything can happen. Underdogs from small colleges sometimes topple the giants. We watch, we wince, we marvel. This year, the madness has spilled beyond the court into far more dangerous territory...
The scale of growth of Canada’s assisted-dying industry has become an easy talking point for skeptics both in Canada and abroad. The New York Post, in typical tabloid fashion, announced that Canada will “soon cross the sickly six-figure threshold” of 100,000 deaths by medical assistance in dying (MAID), noting the figure will surpass the number of Canadian deaths during the...
Democrat Emily Gregory won a special election for a Florida state House seat on Tuesday, flipping a district that is home to President Donald Trump's estate, Mar-a-Lago. The Republican president endorsed Gregory's rival, Jon Maples. In a social media post Monday, he urged voters to turn out, saying Maples was endorsed "by so many of my Palm Beach County friends."...
India would like to create a trusted traveller program with Ottawa that could ease access to Canada for Indian businesspeople similar to the NEXUS program for Canadians and Americans, New Delhi’s top envoy says. Dinesh Patnaik, India’s high commissioner to Canada, said such an arrangement could be part of the deepening ties between the two countries that follow from Prime...
I have an urgent request for Prime Minister Mark Carney: please come to Vaughan, Ont., to meet with our Jewish community. As Vaughan’s mayor, I want you to know that Jews here feel angry, scared, defiant, tired, shocked and beleaguered. Who can blame them? I’ve lived my entire life in this country, but I have never before witnessed the shocking...
Start with the crisis everyone agrees on. A generation of young Canadians has been priced out of home ownership. Rents are consuming incomes. The dream of a mortgage, a backyard, a place to call one’s own has become, for millions, exactly that — a dream. Any serious federal leader must make housing affordability a defining mission. Which makes what I’m...
If you lay on the beach on the north coast of the Dominican Republic, warming your northern skin and admiring the play of the sun on the waves, you can sip pina coladas made from beautiful local pineapple juice, and when you want a snack, you can pay a few pesos for a little bag of brown Spanish peanuts from...
There are many ways that governments can be defeated, from self-inflicted scandals and political corruption to their failure to respond to broader global trends and events. But few things will bring a government to its knees faster than unchecked food price inflation. The surge of post-COVID inflation and the impact it had on grocery bills transformed the politics in most...
Despite some blemishes on Mark Carney’s otherwise immaculate image, his personal approval ratings are off the charts. If an election were held tomorrow, the Liberals would win north of 200 seats. Here's why.
Marjorie Harris and Michael Hughes are deadlocked, with net favourability scores of +1. The thing is, they are made up names for an experiment. Ever since I started working in public opinion research (back in the early 1980’s) I was keen to know about the sources of bias that can creep into research unless care is taken in survey design.
From the moment that Donald Trump first started talking about Canada as the 51st state, all sorts of people have debated whether the president was joking or serious. The answer, it seems, is both, and we learned that this week when Pierre Poilievre sat down for an epically long conversation with the right-wing American podcaster Joe Rogan.
We live in an increasingly uncertain world. Amid trade wars, hot wars, geopolitical conflicts, and rising oil prices, the disruption-and-destruction rap sheet of the second Trump administration grows longer by the day. As Prime Minister Mark Carney said during his now-famous Davos Speech on January 20, as a middle power, Canada must adapt to this challenging new context. Yet, despite...
What in heaven’s name is going on in Prime Minister Mark Carney’s government with regard to the threat posed to Canada’s national security by India?
If Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre had asked me whether he should go on Joe Rogan’s podcast in the United States this week, I would have told him, “No.” I would have been wrong. Poilievre’s appearance on the world’s No. 1 podcast may well mark the moment when he began turning around Canadian voters’ impression of him.
Sometime during the evening of April 13th, Mark Carney will quite likely find out that his majority in the House of Commons is secure. The results of the upcoming federal by-elections in University-Rosedale and Scarborough West in Toronto will confirm that. If, a few hours later, a Liberal victory in the Montreal-adjacent riding of Terrebonne is also confirmed, that will...
In his first year as prime minister, Mark Carney was restless. Two days after being sworn in at Rideau Hall, he made official visits to France and the United Kingdom. Shortly thereafter he went into a five-week election campaign, and a week after last spring's vote he travelled to Washington. In the months since, Carney has been to Belgium, the...
Pierre Poilievre arrived for his long-rumoured-and-finally-realized appearance on The Joe Rogan Experience bearing hefty baggage. The Conservative Leader presented Mr. Rogan with a 70-lb kettlebell created by a Calgary company that specializes in bespoke alterations to guns and knives. Before the episode even aired on Thursday, Mr. Poilievre’s office sent out a statement containing what I can only describe as...
It’s not true to say that the end justifies the means. Neither is it true that it never does. The true statement is: some ends justify some means. A lot of people who ought to know better seem to have persuaded themselves that the U.S.-Israel war on Iran (in? against? with?) is a case of the end justifying the means...
Members of Parliament are allowed to switch parties, and pretending otherwise just makes you sound weak. There is a thing that happens in sports sometimes when a coach or a player, after a tough defeat, refuses to accept that they might be at fault. They blame the officials, or a busy schedule, or a brutal stretch of injuries. Or maybe...
Pierre Poilievre’s interview with podcast giant Joe Rogan began on-theme, with the Conservative party leader gifting the skeptical-yet-gullible interviewer with a red maple leaf emblazoned 70-pound kettlebell, and stayed in the zone for the next two-and-a-half hours. The marathon chat managed to broach policy, personality, and puffery, sometimes simultaneously. And it was, if not particularly enlightening, fairly endearing. And equally...
Let’s talk for a moment about the scale of Canada’s ambition and how it compares to the scale of what we can plausibly achieve. Last week, Prime Minister Mark Carney announced major plans for Arctic infrastructure. Much of the $35 billion budgeted for them will be used to expand and upgrade existing military facilities; these, in theory, will increase the...
Canada is shrinking. For far back as records have been kept, and probably much farther, this country’s population grew year after year, seemingly inexorably. Until 2025. On Wednesday, Statistics Canada released figures for the fourth quarter, which estimated that Canada’s population declined by 102,436 people over the course of last year.
Manitoba has just become the first jurisdiction in Canada to introduce legislation that would make it an unfair practice for suppliers to charge higher prices based on algorithmic pricing. Bill 49 is aimed at preventing retailers from using personal data, such as purchasing history, to set higher individualized prices. Vass Bednar, managing director of the Canadian Shield Institute, which promotes...
When I was in the first grade, my hometown junior hockey team, the Granby Bisons, played the team from Trois-Rivières. After trailing Trois-Rivières for a while, Granby had finally managed to tie the game. Trois-Rivières decided to change up their goalie and put Mannon Rhéaume in net. My little, six-year-old mind was blown. A girl! Playing hockey! With boys...
Two recent tweets by Donald Trump on Truth Social reflect a dangerous unravelling of his Middle East war strategy, to the extent that there was one. The first is about the refusal of many countries to send military personnel or equipment as part of operation “Epic Fury”: “The United States has been informed by most of our NATO “Allies” that...
In a competition for the prize of most wonderful irony ever, there is a strong candidate. How about the turn of events that has seen the most lethal, destructive force mankind ever created, nuclear weapons, becoming the greatest preserver of peace? Prior to 1945, major wars between great powers occurred about every 20 or 30 years. This era ended when...
A Liberal majority looks all but inevitable. Three Conservative MPs and one New Democrat having crossed the floor, the Liberals now have 170 seats out of 343 in the House. A probable sweep of the three by-elections scheduled for April 13 would leave them with 173, enough to outvote the combined opposition even without the help of the Speaker. That’s...
The Conservatives knew what they were doing – well, sort of – when they announced a petition to nominate former hockey commentator Don Cherry to the Order of Canada. It’s a great cultural wedge issue: one that pits the millions of Canadians with fond memories of Coach’s Corner against the ostensibly smaller cohort of Canadians who still begrudge Mr. Cherry...
If you’re a political nerd like me (and if you’re reading this, you clearly are), you enjoy a good by-election night. They’re a fun little pitstop between general elections - a chance to get a sense of where the parties actually stand. Sometimes they tell you a lot, sometimes they tell you nothing at all, but they tell you SOMETHING...
Energy Minister Tim Hodgson pitched increasing natural gas flows to the United States, aimed at boosting LNG exports from the Gulf Coast and meeting rising power demand from artificial-intelligence data centers. Article content In an interview on Bloomberg Television, Hodgson said he had a “wonderful conversation” with U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum during the CERAWeek...
Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew says today's budget will take the tax off food from the grocery store. Kinew, in a post on social media, says everything from rotisserie chicken to salads would be free of the provincial sales tax of the budget passes. The change is a key part of a budget that promises to focus on affordability and health...
The federal justice minister has rejected an appeal from four provinces for more input into judicial appointments, saying the status quo has served the administration of justice well. The premiers of Ontario, Quebec, Saskatchewan and Alberta signed a letter to Prime Minister Mark Carney that calls for federal appointments to superior trial courts and courts of appeal of the provinces...
Prime Minister Mark Carney issued a call for politicians to be humble in their service and think broadly about their legacy as he offered his perspective on faith and public life Tuesday morning. Mr. Carney, as well as Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre, were among the MPs who attended the National Prayer Breakfast, an annual Christian event held in downtown Ottawa...
Age restrictions on using social media accounts and AI chatbots are among the topics up for debate when Liberal party grassroots gather next month for their national convention. Party rank-and-file are set to meet in Montreal for their policy convention April 9 through 11, where 24 different policy resolutions are on the agenda. They include two duelling proposals on reforming...
The premiers of Ontario, Quebec, Alberta and Saskatchewan are jointly calling on the federal government to give them more of a say in judges who are appointed to their superior and appeal courts. They say in a letter to Prime Minister Mark Carney that having their governments actively engaged in the process will help ensure judicial appointments "appropriately reflect the...
Canadian foreign service officials who say they and their families continue to struggle with “Havana syndrome” are outraged over Ottawa’s latest statement on the mysterious health incidents, saying it’s the latest betrayal in a years-long dispute over what happened to them.
The number of return trips to the U.S. by Canadian residents was down more than 20 per cent in January, a year into the second term of U.S. President Donald Trump, Statistics Canada reported on Monday. “Starting in early 2025, travel trends among Canadian residents shifted alongside the political tensions between Canada and the United States,” StatCan said on its...
As the Supreme Court hears arguments on the notwithstanding clause’s role in Canada, some Liberal party members are arguing for using the federal government’s nuclear option, disallowance, which can invalidate any provincial laws, including those that use the clause to bypass the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. When they gather in Montreal for their national convention on April 9, Liberals...
Prime Minister Mark Carney’s government has left vacant for 10 months the role of a federal ombudsman whose job is to probe overseas human-rights abuses by Canadian corporations, and Ottawa says the once-heralded watchdog agency remains under review. The government is also declining to say whether federal budget cuts have affected staff who are responsible for enforcing Ottawa’s forced-labour import...
Secret files reveal Mounties penetrated Assembly of First Nations’ predecessor, spied on Indigenous leaders. The Mounties called it the "Native extremism program." Today, it sounds like a spy novel. Intelligence dossiers stuffed with documents. Wiretaps. Paid informants. Covert operatives with code numbers like "A-828." A Red Power dissident photo album. Surreptitious surveillance at homes, offices, airports and bars.
Sovereign wealth funds will want to invest in new oil pipeline, Smith says. The first set of deadlines included in the energy and climate deal struck between Prime Minister Mark Carney and Alberta Premier Danielle Smith are not expected to be met, showing early challenges with the agreement that includes pursuing a new export pipeline from Alberta to the West...
Style advisor Dale Olsen says he doesn't distinguish between party colours, but he doubts British Columbia Premier David Eby is well qualified to act as the fashion police. Eby thrust political attire onto the agenda this month when he dressed down Opposition legislature member Gavin Dew for wearing a grey hoodie as he voted remotely on a private member's bill...
Public Safety Minister Gary Anandasangaree says gun owners have reported more than 51,000 firearms to the federal government with one week left to go in a program to provide compensation for banned guns. The figure is well short of the 136,000 firearms for which the government set aside money when the buyback program for individual owners opened in January. Anandasanagree...
Canada can protect rules-based international trade and resist pressure from superpowers by working more with the Americas, shoring up supply chains and strengthening economic ties, Costa Rica's trade minister said on a recent visit to Ottawa. "We share the same vision of the type of world that we would like to live in," Manuel Tovar Rivera said in an interview...
Prime Minister Mark Carney's office says public servants are correcting information the government tabled in Parliament that suggested he did not "proactively" raise human rights or foreign interference during his visit to Beijing. Carney met in January with Chinese President Xi Jinping and told reporters at the end of his visit to Beijing that he had spoken with Xi about...
Conservatives to vote against PBO nominee Annette Ryan, who promised to remain independent. The Liberal government's nominee to be the next fiscal watchdog insists she'll run an independent and non-partisan ship — even though her candidacy has created a political rift. Senior public servant Annette Ryan appeared before the House finance committee Monday afternoon as part of the nomination process...
A new report from Canada’s auditor general found reforms to the international student program “fell short” on improving integrity, including only investigating a small number of potentially problematic cases flagged by post secondary institutions. The report, tabled in the House of Commons Monday morning, found that out of 153,324 potentially non-compliant students reported by schools to Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship...
Members of Parliament continued debate on the government's contentious hate crimes bill Monday after they returned to Ottawa following a break week that saw both the Liberal and Conservative leaders on international trips. The Liberals have passed a motion to impose a time limit on debate for Bill C-9, which would define hatred in criminal law for the first time...
Canada's auditor general says the federal government is running out of time to clear the backlog of public service pay transactions under the old Phoenix system to avoid infecting the new system with errors. The federal government is working to replace the error-prone Phoenix with a new system, Dayforce, and all departments and agencies are expected to move to the...
Party determined to speak about priority issues like affordability, says Steve Outhouse. The federal Conservative Party's campaign manager is shrugging off polls showing the Liberals hold a double-digit lead over the Tories — while Pierre Poilievre says he's broadening his image but won't change who he is. "Polls are polls, and they do what polls do," Steve Outhouse said in...
$529M deal became target of scrutiny after Stellantis announced Brampton plant ‘pause.’ The multi-million-dollar deal at the heart of a high-profile fight between the Canadian government and one of the world’s biggest carmakers contains multiple clauses about the company’s footprint in Ontario, according to a copy obtained by CBC Windsor. The contract for up to $529 million in public funding...
Canada and the rest of the democratic world are facing a “tsunami” of transnational and digital repression with the rise of authoritarianism in the U.S., the arrival of artificial intelligence and a softening of attitudes on human rights, according to a respected Canadian cyber-research group. The director of the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global...
Ottawa's choice for the next federal fiscal watchdog is set to face questions from MPs before she can be confirmed as the next parliamentary budget officer. Annette Ryan, a longtime public servant and the current deputy director at Canada's financial intelligence agency, Fintrac, was named as cabinet's pick to become the next parliamentary budget officer earlier this month.
As Mark Carney hits his one-year mark as prime minister and the Liberals reach their strongest levels of support in a decade, polls show the party could win more than 200 seats if an election were held now. But, pollsters caution that events such as a potential recession, rising gas prices linked to the United States-Israeli attack on Iran, and...
Aviation officials say two Air Canada pilots were killed late Sunday when their flight from Montreal crashed into a rescue vehicle on a runway at New York’s LaGuardia Airport. Kathryn Garcia with the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey says 41 people were taken to hospital and that 32 have since been released. She says nine people remain...
This week lands between the Bank of Canada's last interest rate decision and next week's GDP report.
Three byelections are being held on April 13 and the results could have an impact on both the makeup of Parliament and how long it lasts. Here's a primer on how things could change.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Democrat Emily Gregory won a special election for a Florida state House seat on Tuesday, flipping a district that is home to President Donald Trump's estate, Mar-a-Lago.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Senators raced Tuesday to clinch an emerging proposal to end the Homeland Security shutdown by funding much of the department, including the Transportation Security Administration airport workers going without pay, but excluding the ICE enforcement operations that have been core to the dispute.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Americans' outlook on the job market has turned increasingly pessimistic, a surprisingly negative shift given the low unemployment rate but one that likely reflects an ongoing hiring drought.
President Donald Trump has cast another mail ballot in Florida as he continues to publicly bash the voting method as a source of fraud and push Congress to curtail the practice.
Democrat Emily Gregory won a special election for a Florida state House seat on Tuesday, flipping a district that is home to President Donald Trump's estate, Mar-a-Lago. The Republican president endorsed Gregory's rival, Jon Maples. In a social media post Monday, he urged voters to turn out, saying Maples was endorsed "by so many of my Palm Beach County friends."...
India would like to create a trusted traveller program with Ottawa that could ease access to Canada for Indian businesspeople similar to the NEXUS program for Canadians and Americans, New Delhi’s top envoy says. Dinesh Patnaik, India’s high commissioner to Canada, said such an arrangement could be part of the deepening ties between the two countries that follow from Prime...
President Donald Trump took to social media Saturday to celebrate the death of Robert Mueller, the former FBI director who famously led the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.
Iran’s top military spokesman has warned that “parks, recreational areas and tourist destinations” worldwide won’t be safe for Tehran’s enemies. Gen. Abolfazl Shekarchi made the threat Friday as Iran continues to be hit by American and Israeli airstrikes. It was likely to renew concerns that as the war goes on, Iran may revert to using militant attacks beyond the Middle...
French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot is openly mulling the idea of Canada seeking membership in the European Union. Speaking at the Europe 2026 conference in Berlin today, Barrot said the European Union is attracting more candidate countries, such as Iceland, and suggested "maybe Canada at some point" will sign up.
Canada’s housing shortage is no longer just an affordability problem. It is increasingly a constraint on economic growth, labour mobility, and the ability of cities to function effectively. Despite record levels of construction employment and investment, housing supply continues to fall far short of what Canadians need. The core problem lies in a sustained decline in residential construction productivity. Employment...
Economic immigrants selected through the two-step process — first as temporary foreign workers before being permanent residents — generally earn more than those selected directly from abroad. But outcomes vary widely: two-step immigrants with high pre-admission Canadian earnings enjoy substantial and persistent earnings advantages, while those with lower pre-admission earnings often fare worse than one-step immigrants. The findings suggest that...
A one-time northern Ontario fur-trading post, Sault Ste. Marie’s fortunes changed when U.S. industrialist Francis Clergue built a hydroelectric power plant on the banks of the St. Mary’s River more than 100 years ago. The dam brought cheap power to the area and turned it into an industrial hub. Clergue also opened a steel mill, a pulp and paper mill...
A collection of SubStack publishing within Canadian public affairs.
Canadian troops may be only days away from deploying to the Middle East to aid the U.S.’s and Israel’s war on Iran. The latest indication is a joint statement expressing concern about Iran’s restriction of oil tankers through the narrow Strait of Hormuz signed by Prime Minister Mark Carney and NATO allies late in the week.
Canadians who have neglected to pay their taxes to the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) have been coming forward in droves to take advantage of new amnesty rules.
Ontario Premier Doug Ford’s spurious excuses for gutting the province’s freedom-of-information (FOI) law are exactly why we need transparency legislation in the first place: governments are habitual liars. Last week, the Ford government said it plans to weaken its sunshine law by erecting brick walls around every minister’s office, including the premier’s. Freedom-of-information requests will no longer be accepted. The...
By the end of this week, the NDP will have a new leader but what will that signal? Comeback, rebuild, or continue to disappear from the national stage? Are we. missing something about Canada without the NDP's voice? That's one of the topics for Althia Raj and Rob Russo on this Tuesday's installment of Reporter's Notebook. That and a lot...
What could Trump's latest threats toward Cuba mean for a country already in deep economic and humanitarian crisis? Peter and Jeremy welcome former Canadian ambassador to Cuba Mark Entwistle to unpack the pressure now bearing down on the island: the long aftermath of COVID, the collapse of tourism and tightening US sanctions. Is Washington pursuing regime change, a transactional economic...
It's now Week Four of the Iran War and Trump delays one threat but things remain very tense. How bad could things get? We ask those questions of Dr Janice Stein from the Munk School at the University of Toronto as she makes her regular Monday Bridge appearance.
